Life drawings & Etching update!

So despite the weather's desperate attempts to prevent me from getting to life drawing last Thursday , I still managed to get there if a bit late. The rest of these will go up on my facebook page but heres a couple that I quite liked. 

As for print work, I've started the first of two (perhaps more than two) plates for a new series of prints based on Zodiac characters and the constellations that their 30° divisions of space as seen from earth. Starting with Libra (the sign rather than the constellation), in his cloak are the constellations of Lupus, Ophiuchus, Scorpio, Virgo, Hydra, Serpens Caput and Centaurus. Somewhere else on his figure will be the astrological notation for libra ♎.   

First, I drew up some quick thumbnails and silhouettes in my sketchbook, did some research on the constellations in each sign's domain and tried out different poses and places for the star field to be placed- on the cloak, hair, skin, shawl, dress etc.

Then after drawing it up in Photoshop to my liking, I printed it out A6 size (same as the copper plate) and traced it onto the plate with the needle. Then, as shown in the image above, I laid down a light rosin aquatint and stopped out all the areas I wanted to remain clean with varnish- the background, the mantle and the constellation points.

5 minutes of etching later, the plate was ready for another round of stop out varnish. 

And after 2 printing proofs this is where it's at. I'm quite happy with the result though I should have let the aquatint be stronger on the cloak since it isn't quite as graphic as I expected. Next week I intend to re-aquatint it so that this time I get a light shade over the figure as well as the cloak, and also to deepen the tones in the star field. The 2nd print will be Virgo but more on that next week.

Dragon Age Inquisition comes out pretty soon, so I channeled my excitement for the game into trying out the official artwork's beautifully stylized Tarot cards. It was a fun exercise and in the future I might be tempted to include more abstract shapes within my work.


And finally, I've got some prints available to buy in the Belfast Print workshop Gallery , should you be in the city and want to see some of my older prints. There are several artist proofs and unique prints (non-edition ed) that I will be adding to my Etsy shop in the coming weeks so look forward to that! :)

-Sam

Finished painting!

Finished the painting a couple of days ago, spent yesterday merging and splitting layers and repainting small sections that only get seen for a few seconds as the camera moves. I've currently got around 30-35 layers  that made it through to aftereffects. As a bonus,  a screengrab of my workspace in Aftereffects, with a nifty 3 quarter-ish view of everything- almost in place. 

Today I'm focusing on the camera's path and getting some of the smaller particle systems in place. 

5/11/13 life drawing & Digital processes

This week I brought a watercolours set with me to evening lifeclass. Mostly because it's been a long time since I've worked brush in hand, but also because I'd never used that particular medium for quick, loose drawings. Certainly got some nice marks, but I need to invest in a wider brush, and less absorbent paper- I was looking for a messier more of a wash kind of effect, but the brush was too small and the card too quick to soak up the water. At the start, I tried to get the gesture down in conte first, then paint the volume/weight in with the w/colours, but this didn't really work out in the time we had, so I restricted my palette (cobalt and crimson) and left the conte out of the process. One step, no longer evident was drawing everything pretty quickly with water before putting down paint, then adding pigment to diffuse in the wet card.

This morning we had a workshop class on refining digital practice- starting with a quick thumbnail and speedily working it up to a firm idea, but not getting chained into details- 20 minutes spent, tops. 

I went to an old idea I had during the summer for the practice thumb, the key principles being a clear sense of depth/perspective, solid composition, and quickly using gradients to try out different colour palettes for the potential painting. 

-Sam

Character & Environment design Brief: Excelsior and Blue BeetleCurrent progress

"Scenario:A science fiction or fantasy world. This world may be futuristic or may have a feel of an ancient culture.
In this society the population is divided into the rich and the poor.
The city is built on a platform and is supported on some kind of series of pillars. The rich live on top of the platform and the poor live below.
Among the poor exist the gangs and there are lots of these all radically different from one another.
In the upper city there is a monastery where the religious rulers of the city live. The monastery is not built on the platform but hovers above it.
The Hero:Joeb is a young monk from the monetary. He belongs to a part of the order highly-trained in martial arts.
His mission is to go into the dangerous under city and meet with a mysterious individual who has a box for him to collect and take back to the monastery."

I started out in my sketchbook with a few ideas for how I wanted my city to play out, next I built a  (too complicated) model in sketchup

After messing around with the camera, I got a few good angles and plenty of ideas, so I blocked in the basic forms and added some stone cliff texture

(Sunset variation? I was experimenting with how dark I wanted it beneath the platform; the sky and lighting on the furthest pillar were happy accidents.)

As of today, this study is finished, I think that next time my workflow will be (hopefully) faster

But since I'd gotten across the feel from the undercity that I was hoping for, I moved on to some of the designs of the gangs. First off, the shadowy group "The Dusk";

I had a pretty strong image of them in my head, robed- with capes, hoods and concealment. Kind of like a ninja gang but without the implicit honor. 

These are the initial designs for the Religious group that live above the platform city in their floating shrine/monastery. I picked up the idea of the masks from japanese festival masks. The monks all wear them, I tried to make them seem somewhat unnerving/uncanny. Since I want the lead monks to be either spirits/demons/whatever but not human, just humanoid. For the main character, I'm thinking he'll be a young acolyte at the shrine, wearing a mask too, but only because it's traditional. 

And now a brief update on the Blue Beetle Brief from the first week- its been put on the back burner while I get into the swing of things with all this time management.

I return to education! But first! A recap!

I guess I'll just have to accept my fate as an unpredictable blogger, who often leaves large gaps of deadzone between well documented..uh.. "stuff". (Stuff that we're going to call work.)

Most of the work I've done since June (the last update! oops) has been life drawing and the world-building concept project I mentioned in the last post, Oculus Sclera.

These can all be found in my portfolio site at, probably, higher resolutions. I never decided whether this would be a game, animation or comic, so I just designed and wrote til I got an idea of the world I wanted to make.  Basicly, a peacekeeping force known as Oculus protected a royal family of the largest kingdom, but they got betrayed and all but destroyed. Years pass, and it falls to the two characters Howland and Jessica to take back the kingdom from the evil faction. 

 

The Oculus Sclera is the reborn organization, of which Jessica and Howland are the main members. I decided early on that Howland would be a talented magic user, while Jessica's ability lay in her martial prowess, and together they could pull off combos and synchronized fighting styles. 

Another thing I knew from the get-go was that, while Jessica would be the melee combatant, she wouldn't be totally heavily armored. But she wouldn't be boob-window, here stab me in the midriff, chainmail bikini clad. So I tried to come up with some alternate styles. The first is the ceremonial Oculus clothing which is very similar for both male and female- coat, sash and boots. Though the male version includes a blindfold (for plot reasons). 

They would each have the basic "?" looking staff weapon that would transform into, in Jessica's case, swords, bows and polearms and for Howland, a series of elementally themed staves. art wise, I came up with about 15 or so silhouettes but only developed this one, Siren. This was the first time I had attempted anything like this so it was an excellent learning experience. It certainly gave me focus, to have all the pieces drawing from a single world concept. 

While I had a pretty good idea for the OS magi, the Mundus remained pretty badly described in my notes. So while exploring the idea of what was originally a mecha design for something else, it became more of a weird magitechnical golem. The Mundus then solidified as faction that combined technological advances and previously known magical enchantments, while holding firm "mundane" beliefs. ie, magic users shouldn't rule as "absolute power corrupts absolutely" etc. The above golem would be piloted remotely by the Mundus leader, a surprisingly young man who was disfigured and has turned to experimenting on himself and others for "the greater good of the kingdom".

Anyway, moving on from the OS work, as you can see if you checked out my portfolio, it was only a means to an end. Getting into my choice of masters of art course (MA). I was successful in my application! (huzzah!) And I'm now living in Middlesbrough, in the North East of England. The course title is Ma Concept art for animation and video games, and I'll be studying here for 12 months to graduate next September.

Classes are to start this coming Monday and I'm very excited! I'll be bringing this blog back to life as I write about my experiences and reflect on what I've learned during the week.
I've set a rather lofty goal for myself, however. To work my damnest and during easter 2014, submit my work to imaginefx to see if I meet the standard. I have a few other goals in mind, but each is more distant, and at the moment they would be impossible for me. First, get into imagineFX, then to paint a MTG card design, and finally, someday, work for Arenanet. Getting a degree out of this course is a nice side effect.

-Sam

Ps. If I get a spare chance, I'll update the layout/background of this site, its just a liiiiiittle bit dated I feel.

Oh. Its you. It's been a long time. How have you been?

Haha, excuse my Portal 2 reference, but it has been just shy of a year since I last updated this blog. Things got a bit hectic there towards the end of last year, with moving house, living with friends and moving back, then my application for the MA didn't go through for February. Since then, however, I've been trying to draw and print more, so that I can re-apply for the same MA in September. I now have life classes twice a week, one being a regular fine art untutored session, and the other being 3 hours of fast paced gesturing and sketching; a tutored club in the University of Ulster for Life drawing in Animation.
Printmaking got set aside while I've been focusing on strengthening my anatomy and drawing technique, but with the R.U.A's annual exhibition open submission date looming, I'm thinking of a few new plate ideas- perhaps I'll get three pieces in, who knows?

Portfolio wise, the previous content wasn't close enough to the requirements for the course, so between now and August, I plan on developing on the things which I lack. Namely, Character design, weapon/vehicle design and environment concepts- with several variations thereof.
To this end, I've chosen a short story I wrote when I was younger to be the setting that ties my designs together. I think it'll do the overall portfolio good to have some connecting theme, and to give myself an anchor as to not get too bogged down with small details.

Thats it for now! If you wanna check out some of the work I've done since I started my life drawing classes, check out THIS LINK RIGHT HERE. It will take you to the tumblr tag "Sam's draws" on my non-srs-bsns tumblr.

Thank you for reading!